Courses

As a STEM+Social Science course, Social Simulations offers an integrated learning journey to develop a solid foundation in three domains that you can readily apply to many majors: social science, computational modeling, and research skills. 

• You will learn social science through the lens of social dilemmas, which arise whenever individual and collective interests do not coincide.  From the empty coffee pot in office break rooms to large-scale cooperation and coordination problems among governments to solve global pandemics, social dilemmas are pervasive within all groups and across social settings. Key concepts and theories about social dilemmas will offer you a wide window to the social sciences and systematic approaches to understand major problems and potential solutions.

• You will learn computational modeling through the lens of agent-based models (ABM). The ABM skills you will learn in this class are widely applicable beyond the study of social dilemmas. For example, computational modeling is useful to analyze business processes. Scientists use similar approaches to analyze ecological and biological systems, among many other scientific areas. 

• You will learn basic research skills to formulate and implement academic studies. Throughout the session you will learn how to formulate clear research questions and hypotheses. You also will learn how to use an appropriate computational model to produce and analyze data. For a required group project, you will learn to collaborate with classmates and prepare a professional presentation for the IFS academic forum.

This class has minimal requirements.  All you need is proficiency with high school algebra and a willingness to learn new tools and skills.   Prior computing experience is useful but not a prerequisite.   And you will also have advance assistance with a summer preparatory module to help you install required programs and practice basic computing skills. 

Once the IFS session begins, we will work with a user-friendly programming environment called NetLogo that combines graphical interfaces and basic textual instructions. In terms of visual design, the graphical interface allows you to add buttons, slides, and other objects to a canvas that represents the situation you want to simulate. The simulation itself will follow your written instructions (this is the actual “code” that tells NetLogo how to behave). 

NetLogo is easy and fun to learn because it has a similar orientation to Scratch or Lego, in terms of assembling smaller pieces to create a bigger object.  To maximize available IFS time, we will regularly take advantage of an extensive coding library to avoid writing models entirely from scratch.  By adapting existing code, students can focus on learning basic programming logic and—most importantly—designing ABM simulations that can help us answer substantive social science questions.  

This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College. 

Catalog Information: COLL-S 105  FRESHMAN SEMINAR IN N&M

Instructor:

Armando Razo

Email:

arazo@indiana.edu

Department:

Political Science

I study how informal and formal institutions affect economic outcomes in developing countries, using multiple methods that include mathematical and computational models. My research also applies statistical network analysis to the study of economic history and international development. I served on the Founding Scientific Leadership Team that helped establish the Indiana University Network Science Institute (http://iuni.iu.edu). I have taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses on various topics such as Networks and institutions, Quantitative contextual analysis, Political economy of development, Latin American politics, and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). 

GenEd Information: Approved for the Natural & Mathematical Sciences - Natural Sciences requirement of the IU Bloomington General Education program.